SOURCE: BUSINESS, LABOR GET DEAL ON A WORKER PROGRAM

Will remove biggest hurdle to passing major immigration bill

WASHINGTON 
Big business and labor have struck a deal on a new low-skilled worker program, removing the biggest hurdle to completion of sweeping immigration legislation allowing 11 million illegal immigrants eventual U.S. citizenship, a person with knowledge of the talks said Saturday.

The agreement was reached in a phone call late Friday night with AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, U.S. Chamber of Commerce head Tom Donohue and Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, who has been mediating the dispute.

The person, who spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement, said the deal resolves disagreements over wages for the new workers and which industries would be included. Those disputes had led talks to break down a week ago, throwing into doubt whether Schumer and seven other senators crafting a comprehensive bipartisan immigration bill would be able to complete their work as planned.

The deal must be signed off by the other senators working with Schumer, including Republicans John McCain of Arizona and Marco Rubio of Florida, but that is expected to happen. With the agreement in place, the senators are expected to unveil their legislation the week of April 8. Their measure would secure the border, crack down on employers, improve legal immigration and create a 13-year pathway to citizenship for the millions of unauthorized immigrants in the United States.

It’s a major second-term priority of President Barack Obama’s and would usher in the most dramatic changes to the nation’s faltering immigration system in more than two decades.

The AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce, longtime antagonists over temporary worker programs, had been fighting over wages for tens of thousands of low-skilled workers who would be brought in under the new program to fill jobs in construction, hotels and resorts, nursing homes and restaurants and other industries.

Under the agreement, a new “W” visa program would go into effect beginning April 1, 2015, according to another official involved with the talks who also spoke on condition of anonymity ahead of a formal announcement.

In the first year of the program, 20,000 workers would be allowed in; in year two, 35,000; in year three, 55,000; and in year four, 75,000. Ultimately, the program would be capped at 200,000 workers a year, but the number of visas would fluctuate, depending on unemployment rates, job openings, employer demand and data collected by a new federal bureau pushed by the labor movement as an objective monitor of the market.

A “safety valve” would allow employers to exceed the cap if they can show need and pay premium wages, but any additional workers brought in would be subtracted from the following year’s cap, the official said.

The workers could move from employer to employer and would be able to petition for permanent residency and ultimately seek U.S. citizenship. Neither is possible today for temporary workers.

The new program would fill needs employers say they have that are not met by U.S. immigration programs. Most industries don’t have a good way to hire a steady supply of foreign workers because there is one temporary visa program for low-wage nonagricultural workers, but it’s capped at 66,000 visas per year and is supposed to be used for seasonal or temporary jobs.